Not since Audrey Hepburn went lightly about her business in Breakfast at Tiffany's has an actress spun sex so effortlessly into gold. Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman may not have possessed Hepburn's unerring urbanity, but she shares the earlier star's once-upon-a-timeless quality of remaining magically innocent while pricking our most prurient interests. By turns childlike and sophisticated, Roberts is the kind of woman one longs to tuck in—late, late at night. There is a fairy-tale quality to her bedtime appeal.

Currently, Roberts is filming The Pelican Brief, based on John Grisham's best-seller. Alan Pakula, who guided Jane Fonda and Meryl Streep to best-actress Oscars (in, respectively, Klute and Sophie's Choice), is directing the film from his own screenplay. It is Roberts's character, Darby Shaw, a Tulane law student, who spurs on the plot after she discovers who is behind the murders of two Supreme Court justices. Sam Shepard plays her friendly law professor, Denzel Washington the D.C. newspaper reporter who cracks the story open.

"There is a nonthreatening appeal to Julia. She's boldly vulnerable," claims filmmaker Joe Roth, former chairman of Twentieth Century Fox, from the offices of his production company, Caravan Pictures, headquartered on the Disney lot. Roberts plans to shoot her follow-up film, I Love Trouble, Caravan's third feature, right after she finishes The Pelican Brief. "It's unbelievable that someone so physically beautiful could also have this 'everyperson' quality about her, but that's exactly why she's a movie star. It's the same quality that Costner has."

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A romantic comedy about two Chicago newspaper reporters, I Love Trouble was written by Nancy Meyers and Charles Shyer (Baby Boom, Father of the Bride) and is to be directed by the latter. Nick Nolte will co-star. "This is a very Spencer Tracy-Katharine Hepburn kind of film, very Pat and Mike-ish," Roth explains, then deadpans, "Julia Roberts in a romantic comedy? I think it might work."

Roberts is obviously getting her career back in gear after a rapid-fire succession of films (Mystic Pizza, Steel Magnolias, Pretty Woman, Flatliners, Dying Young, Sleeping with the Enemy, and Hook) made her America's most popular— and bankable—actress. She got so hot so fast that she was satirized in Robert Altman's hip parody of the film business, The Player, as the one star whose presence in a movie guaranteed a studio green light. In the film and in real executive suites all over Hollywood, she was the one the moguls wanted for everything. Her name hummed through the hills like a mantra. But even though her cameo at the end of The Player proved she still had the energy to laugh at her predicament, Roberts was exhausted. For the last two years, she has just bided her time, and Hollywood's been happy to wait. She's still that sought-after.

"Look, I don't have anything against anybody, no matter what anybody has ever said, done, or written.... But lets call a truce"

She was, after all, in her early 20s when stardom hit—a relatively recent emigrant from Smyrna, Georgia, the daughter of parents who ran a drama workshop. Fresh out of high school, she moved to New York City to join her older siblings, Lisa and actor Eric Roberts. Her first job was selling pizza; later she sold sneakers in an Athlete's Foot store, but she quickly started getting work as an actress. Suddenly, she was living in transit from film to film.

"She needed this time off. Deserved it,'' director Joel Schumacher insists when he calls me from the set of his next film, The Client, based on yet another Grisham novel. Schumacher is the only director to have worked with Roberts on two of her films—Flatliners and Dying Young. "If she had kept up her professional pace, then people would have accused her of being a workaholic. You can't win. I mean, though she's sophisticated in many, many ways now, she's still so very young, and needed some time to herself so she could grow up a bit. People always think of Julia as being beautiful or sexy or talented, but what they miss is how extremely bright she is. Taking this time off was the smartest thing she could do. Sometimes we all need to stop and smell the.. . whatever. It was quite a roller-coaster ride for her to go—almost instantly—from this talented young actress who was doing her work to the Biggest Box-Office Star in the World. God bless her. She needed to get her soul into perspective. She has.''

Indeed, Roberts walked away from her much-discussed romances with more style and spirit than anyone gave her credit for. But it was all Elizabeth Taylor-made for tabloid headlines and kicked off the bad-press penance she has had to pay for her success. Loads of stories started making the rounds, and the papers seemed to be printing just about anything. Angry—and feeling betrayed—she turned silent toward reporters. The public began to wonder if something might be wrong.

Nothing could have been farther from the truth. Julia Roberts is simply that earthy kind of southern gal—so often misrepresented as a misfit—who can outclass the stuck-up sorority sisters while she's off at the fraternity, having a grand of time with the brothers. The only time bullshit could possibly be found in her life would be if it were on the bottom of her frequently bare feet.

And now Roberts is back with a vengeance. She's even shocked the world by marrying the coolest country singer alive, Mr. Lyle Lovett. After the public scrutiny of her past love affairs, there was poetic justice in her ability to pull off a wedding in the middle of Indiana without the press. In fact, I had spent time with her only 36 hours before the wedding took place and, proving what a wonderful actress she really is, she did not blink when I brought up the possibility that she was dating Lovett.

"So. You must be a pretty good poker player," I teased her when she called me from the set of The Pelican Brief the week after her marriage.

"No," she said, laughing, "I'm not a cardplayer."

"Did you already know about the wedding and have it planned when we spoke the other day? I mean, it was only a day and a half before it happened."

"No. Well, I knew certain things, but the core of it was spur-of-the-moment."

"Are you going to go on a honeymoon at some point? He's touring; you're filming. When will you work one in?"

"Oh, life is a honeymoon, Kevin."

"Put that on a bumper sticker and stick it on the back of the pickup truck you and Lyle are bound to buy together."

"That's right," she agreed, still laughing. "Life Is a Honeymoon!"

"So how long have you two really known each other?"

"Oh, we had only taken flight over the last little while. I think that certainly fate and timing played a large part in this whole thing. He's just wonderful. He's just a wonderful person. I couldn't be luckier or happier."

"Did any of your family make it to Indiana for the wedding?"

"Yeah. My mom and my sisters. They're very happy for me."

"Let me ask you something. Did the fact that I came down to talk to you—you know, yet another son-of-a-bitch press person—and asked you about Lyle Lovett have anything to do with your decision to just go ahead and get married? Was it like, Shit! Here we go again. I don't want to put up with this. Let's just get married and get all this over with."

"Yeah. In a way."

"You mean, Vanity Fair and I can take credit for your marriage?"

"It's funny. We both were just giddy and wanted to get together and get married. Certainly, as an afterthought, you go, Let's do it now! We love each other. We want to spend our lives together. This way things are calm and quiet and we can do it the way we want to do it without any influences from anybody else. The only downside to it was that I have a handful of really good friends and I didn't have time to arrange for them to come. That, I'll always be sorry about. But you can only do so much when you have limited time. But heck! We'll just keep gettin' married!"

For the record, here's what led up to our initial conversation about Lyle Lovett, those 36 hours before the wedding. I had arranged to meet Roberts in a suite at the Jefferson Hotel in Washington, D.C., on her day off from filming The Pelican Brief, and though it was early in the morning and she had no makeup on and her hair was unkempt, she was still extraordinarily beautiful. At one point we took a break from the interview so we each could go to the bathroom, and when I returned she was applying lip balm to that amazing mouth of hers.

"I had an enormous crush on President Lincoln. I'm glad that passed."

"Better be careful," I teasingly warned her. "If those lips get chapped, it could qualify as a catastrophic illness under Hillary's new health plan."

"You've got a pretty good pair of lips there yourself, Kevin."

"Yeah, well, I was a beautiful black woman in a former life. Proud of it. If you had to choose who or what you were in a former life, who or what would it have been?"

"Oh my God! Let's see. . .what do I realistically believe I would have been or who would I want to have been?"

"Both."

"Let's see..." Roberts contemplated. "Realistically I believe I was probably a farmer somewhere—probably in Russia."

"A male farmer or a female farmer?"

"I'm inclined to think male."

"Why Russia?" I asked.

"Oh... I don't know. I'm just thinking someplace. . .remote."

"More remote than Smyrna?"

"Yeah. That ain't easy. . . Who would I have liked to have been? Mmmm...I don't know. Maybe Nietzsche. Or Pablo Neruda."

"Good God! Why those two?"

Roberts let loose with one of her robust laughs. "Oh. . .just to think interesting things all day long would be so. . .fabulous!"

"You've picked all men," I told her.

"Yeah. I just thought about that."

"Well, you are famous for all the men that you've dated."

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Roberts banked her voice off the memory of Bankhead, another kind of broadly southern belle. "That's not why I'm famous, honey," she moaned.

"All right: you're famous because you're a good actress. I know that. You're infamous for the actors that you've fucked," I challenged, trying to shock a response from her. Roberts flashed her eyes at me the way she can flash them on-screen when someone has gotten her attention. Seduction lay in her unshockable stare; she cocked her head and waited. "The latest rumor concerns you and Lyle Lovett. Is there any truth to you and Lyle?"

Again, her Bankhead voice: "Honey, there is truth to everything you read." She laughed, then seemed to be lost in a scramble of secret thoughts. "That's so funny," she finally said. Her voice, now childlike, had lost all sophistication. "Infamous for the people that I fuck: I'll always remember those words, Kevin. You know, this really interests me. I have not learned, unfortunately, in my 25 years how to create the balance, of my work and my personal life. I have at times lent to that imbalance and I have at times not dealt with that imbalance well. But the greater aspect of it is people's inability to accept that one is private and one is public. ... I can make jokes or whatever, but I don't have to make jokes and I don't have to deal with this... crap... because regardless of how many things have been written about me in the last two years I haven't said anything."

"So is that a yes or a no that you're seeing Lyle Lovett?"

"That's funny. . . mean, I do know Lyle. He played here in D.C. and a whole bunch of us went. We went on this big bus because there were about 25 of us from the crew. And you know how they always have the destination spelled out on the front of those buses? Ours said: LOST. It just seemed so perfect."

KEVIN SESSUMS: Is this your first time in Washington?

JULIA ROBERTS: I came here for vacation with my family when I was seven, and, funny enough, of all the places that I visited on childhood vacations, Washington had a profound effect on me, I had an enormous crush on President Lincoln at that point in my life—I'm glad that passed.

K.S. Who was president when you were seven?

J.R. I was seven in 1974. So it must have been Ford.

K.S. From a Lincoln to a Ford. That's a summing-up.

J.R. I wish it had been Lincoln. I can actually remember my father explaining to me about the Lincoln Memorial and that he was buried there and how they had dug him up to check to see that he was still there before they put him in the ground with the cement and the whole thing. I asked why they had looked to see if he was in there and he said to see if someone had taken him. And I said, "What kind of kooky freak would do that?" It was my father who first explained to me how people were strange.

K.S. A crush on Abraham Lincoln, huh?

J.R. Well, he had a great face. That face is a great face. And that face in stone down at the Lincoln Memorial is a pretty amazing thing to see. It's just breathtaking. He's so stoic and regal and at the same time has this real gentleness. Listen to me talking about Lincoln... this is ridiculous. ...

K.S. Sounds like you're describing Lyle Lovett—who could kinda be Lincoln in a musical if Roy Orbison had written one.

J.R. You're not too far off the base there. Obviously there's a theme. .mmmm... stoic, regal, gentle... that could be Lyle.

K.S. You've said in the past that you don't like to talk about your personal politics, because you don't want it to interfere with the audience's perception of your work, but on the spectrum of downhome Georgia politics from, say, the political bedmates Sam Nunn and Lester Maddox on one end and Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter on the other, where would you place yourself?

J.R. Certainly I have very specific views about politics and religion. I do think that everybody is different and everybody has a right to their opinions whether I concur with them or not. But it can be a bit of a handicap. It's difficult enough ... people have so much to get over anyway with me, so I'm just not going to add to it.

K.S. What do you mean by that?

J.R. By virtue of the spin that the press likes to put on my life.... Probably 80 percent of it is just pure fiction. So people walk in with these preconceived notions and these rumors in their heads and I think that you can't help but look and say to yourself, "Oh, yeah. . .she does look a little bit thin," or whatever it is. So I think that's enough for them to get over.

K.S."Thin" means drug use, right?

J.R. Yes! Thin equals drug use! Of course! Doesn't everybody know that?

K.S. So say it!

J.R. But they say I'm too thin for all kinds of reasons. Then if I wear a baggy dress, I'm pregnant. You just can't win with these people. It's just silly. The fact is that I don't use, nor have I ever used, drugs.

K.S. Never? You've never even tried drugs? Ever? Come on. Be honest with me, Julia.

J.R. I'm scared of drugs. I'm a big chicken. That's why I can have a sense of humor about all this, because I know that deep down inside I'm a chicken. I have this great energy anyway and I always think that my head would blow off my shoulders or something. I mean, I'm curious about it. I've talked to people about it. I've heard other people's drug stories and am fascinated by them.

K.S. You must have been around them in your professional life. Show business is full of drugs.

J.R. I'm around people who've done them, but I'm not really around a drug scene. When the rumors first surfaced, I was just shocked because it seemed so ridiculous. Then it just became absurd. Then it went into a kind of surreal thing that took on a life of its own that didn't have anything to do with me. The fact is that I don't know why people want to think that I'm good or bad or a drug addict or whatever. Finally, though, why protest it? What is the point of saying, "No, you're wrong!'' Who cares? If they want to believe it, they'll believe it. If they don't want to believe it, they won't believe it. I'm not out to change anybody's mind. I'm not out to do anything but do my work. Go see my movies and like them or don't like them. Let's change the subject. This is boring.

K.S. O.K. Back to the simpler subject of politics. Your first role was portraying Elizabeth Dole.

"We both were just giddy and wanted to get together and get married.... We love each other."

J.R. That wasn't really a role. That was in my high-school civics class. We did a mock convention so people could really understand the process. A certain few of us were the candidates who ran for president and, yes, I was Elizabeth Dole. This is how crazy my high school was: when all was said and done my friend Kevin Hester, who was George Bush, was elected as president, and I, as Elizabeth Dole, was vice president.

K.S. What was the key to being Elizabeth Dole?

J.R. Well, wearing a dress was key. Wearing shoes was also key. That really impresses a group.

K.S. The press seemed to cheer your stardom early on, like it seemed to cheer for President Clinton toward the end of the campaign last fall. Yet now Washington reporters seem to want to destroy him with bad publicity in the same way that Hollywood reporters seem to have tried to destroy your reputation during the last couple of years.

J.R. That's just the way of the world, unfortunately. I wouldn't necessarily compare myself with the president, though. [Laughs.] I would never be that bold. I think it's just a sort of syndrome concerning public situations today. It just seems to be a trend that that's how it goes. It's peaks and valleys forced by the press. ... I was thinking about this last night. It's almost as if people are bothered by the fact that I can actually lead a life without making movies. 

K.S. Example.

J.R. I was walking down the street one day to go and get a newspaper and I was followed by this van and this man with a video camera was filming me. This popped up on TV a few days later. I mean, I'm going to get the paper and it's early in the morning and I have my hair pulled back and I have on some little dress or whatever. This woman on the television had the nerve to be completely obsessed by how I looked. Now, I don't have a clue what she looks like when she's going to get the paper, but I seriously doubt it is the same as she does on television. She was saying, "Julia, I have the name of a great hairdresser." I thought, Well, why should I do my hair to go and get a paper on the off chance that somebody is going to videotape it and put it on TV? It just made me curious as to what kind of profound thoughts this woman could ever have if this was something she thinks is key, that this is newsworthy.

K.S. You seem to be one step removed from being mad about it.

J.R. I was never even really mad about it. I think it just took my breath away for a minute.

K.S. Everything must have taken your breath away for a minute once you hit as a movie star.

J.R. What's interesting was. . .the sort of trickle-down effect of everything. One particular weekend, the weekend that Pretty Woman opened, was also the weekend before the Oscars when I was nominated for Steel Magnolias—and I was also filming Sleeping with the Enemy at the same time. So I had come to Los Angeles to go to the Oscars and do that whole thing and it was exciting and fun. I had never been before. Then the movie came out and I was on the way to the airport and I got these phone messages from my agent, Elaine Goldsmith, that Pretty Woman had done well and had great numbers, which meant nothing to me. I went, Oh, that's fine, whatever that means. [Laughs.] I didn't have a clue! Then I went back to work. Pretty Woman didn't come to the town I was working in while I was there. Everything was going on and becoming whatever it was becoming and I was just working and completely unaware of it. It was sort of nice, in that it passed me by a little bit.I wasn't there for the moment-to-moment rise of this movie, which was probably a real blessing because I maintained a selfness of just being a girl and working and making movies instead of being in the whirlwind of activity of this movie and what was happening with it. Every couple of days, Elaine would call and give the reports on the movie's status. It was hard to believe what she was telling me, because I wasn't there to experience it. That lent a lot of relief to what could have been a heady situation for me.

K.S. But you are an example of the packaging that goes on in the movie business when people are turned into products. That red dress you wore in Pretty Woman was as red as a Campbell's tomato-soup can.

J.R. What's nice is that by the time anybody could ever decide to refer to me as a product—and you're the only person who has the nerve to do it to my face. . .

K.S. I don't mean to insult you.

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J.R. No, no, no. . .I understand. . .but by the time that had ever occurred to anybody, I had already done enough work so that I had a sense of why I was doing what I was doing.

K.S. When Audrey Hepburn was too ill to accept the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Screen Actors Guild toward the end of her life, she sent you in her stead. In the speech she had you read you thanked those who had "guided an unknown, insecure, inexperienced, skinny broad into a marketable commodity."

J.R. (simultaneously) "...a marketable commodity."

K.S. Did you have trouble saying that?

J.R. No. No. I would never have trouble saying words that Audrey Hepburn asked me to say. Certainly. I think that at that point—I venture to guess, not wanting to speak for her—she had a perspective of things so that a statement like that made perfect sense. I think that if you do it during it's not good. It's the same thing to me as making a movie and at the same time trying to make a hit. If you try to make a hit, I think you are apt to fail because you have impure motivations.

K.S. Is that why you think Dying Young wasn't a hit?

J.R. We weren't trying to make a hit; we were trying to make a good movie, tell a good story.... It was also just released at the wrong time—everyone connected to the movie will attest to that. Certainly I don't regret making that movie. I really enjoyed making that movie. The movie that we made I was very proud of. The movie that I ultimately saw didn't move me the way the film that we had made did.

K.S. What makes you finally say yes to that one role compared with the hundreds that are offered to you all the time? Pure instinct?

J.R. Yeah. When I read a script, I just know. If I hesitate, I probably won't end up doing it. If I did, it would be a mistake. I just know—I know if it's worth trying to work on or worth doing right then. You just have a sense of it. Yet if I read a script for Sleeping with the Enemy now, would I feel the same way about it as I did three or whatever years ago? Probably not. It's all about timing and where you're at when you read the script. It all boils down to fate.

K.S. As a role model to a lot of young women, are you cognizant of the choices you make? Do you worry about portraying yet another abused woman or damsel in distress?

J.R. I don't know that I get that sort of linear about it.

K.S. In the novel of The Pelican Brief, Darby Shaw, your character, may be the smartest person in the book, but she's also an archetypal cinematic damsel in distress—she might as well be floating toward the falls on an ice floe.

J.R. It's actually a lot more complex than that—partly because Alan Pakula wrote such a great script. . . . This is not just the story of the smartest girl who outwits everybody and is in danger. It has become so much more complex than that or so much more subtle than that. I can sit there and read in the script, "Darby Shaw, the smartest girl.'' Well, you have to see that and you have to know that—and it's not going to be because I'm sitting there with glasses on. You have to understand that she's clever. You have to understand that she works hard. . . . It's not just about danger. There are a lot of gray areas of danger. There's a lot of things that come between what her life was and the two seconds when her life changes forever. She's very complex. The situations that she finds herself in are very complex. It's not really even damsel in distress, because she is no damsel and there is not distress. This is real-life, get-down-to-it grief. Despair. Tension. Fear. Paranoia. The whole ball of wax. From A to Z. I can't just get out there and be scared. Life's a lot more involved than just looking over your shoulder.

K.S. Is there a love scene between Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington in The Pelican Brief?

J.R. A love scene? Well, a love scene as people would obviously consider a love scene, no. But I can't really say for sure what this relationship will ultimately evolve into in the movie, because we haven't shot it yet. It all depends on the day and how things progress and how the reality shapes up.

K.S. Were you instrumental in changing Denzel's part in the story from a white guy to a black guy and getting him involved in the movie?

J.R. It's not really changed from a white man to a black man. He's Gray Grantham. He's always been Gray Grantham. And Denzel Washington is playing him.

K.S. But in the book Grisham makes a point of telling the reader how out of place Grantham feels as a white man in certain black clubs where he goes to meet an informant, and at the very end of the book Darby Shaw is rather tenderly repelled by his white, white legs as they walk on the beach.

'You can only find disappointment in an expectant mind, and I don't really expect anything from Steven Spielberg."

J.R. I don't remember that. That's funny. But who cares? White or black. Who cares? I just wanted the best man for the part.

K.S. But the studio will probably play up the interracial aspect of the pairing of Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington.

J.R. They're not going to play it up because it is beside the point. There is no point. Like they say on TV: race, religion, color, sex, or national origin. Who gives a shit?

K.S. Well, Spike Lee gives a shit.

J.R. Yeah, but if you're making a movie about it, then you give a shit. This movie is not about who's black and who's white, who's the girl and who's the boy. This movie is about a specific story and about a specific plot and about a specific idea of intrigue. It's beside the point who's doing what and who's wearing what color skin while they're doing it. Who cares? It's about time we stopped casting roles by color.

K.S. When you did Pretty Woman, were you afraid that it was going to turn into a recruitment film for girls out there to come to Hollywood and be whores, because it was such a harmless fairy tale?

J.R. That's the most absurd question you've asked me, Kevin. Recruitment film. . .are you crazy?

K.S. It was such a fairy tale.

J.R. But it was a fairy tale. Hello? Fairy tale! Fantasy! Not real life!

K.S. But can these girls know the difference?

J.R. Oh, well, come on. We did everything but put a glass slipper on my foot.

K.S. So obviously you didn't think it was a recruitment film.

J.R. Obviously. I think that's just silly. That's diggin'. That's diggin' pretty deep.

K.S. One of the most interesting things about the novel of The Pelican Brief is how your character has to postpone her grief after tragically losing someone in her life in order literally to survive. The postponement of grief is something we all tend to deal with at some point in our lives.

J.R. What's profoundly sad to me is how her grief comes out at different times and in different ways.

K.S. Since your father died when you were still a child, has abandonment been an issue in your life as you've grown up?

J.R. Abandonment?

K.S. You have played quite a few characters who...

J.R. . . .have had "father issues.'' Yeah. Mmmm. . .abandonment? It's funny. I've never really thought of it as abandonment, I guess. I don't know. I think I have a keener reality—even as a kid—that he died. It's not anything that anybody can help or that you sort of do to someone. It is just a. . .happening. Things happen.

K.S. He died of cancer?

J.R. Mmmm. . .

K.S. Did you witness the death?

J.R. Ooooo. . .you're really getting gruesome. No. No.

K.S. My mother died of cancer also, so what I meant was did you watch as this person who signified strength to you began to waste away into a state of helplessness? How does that affect you later on? J.R. No, I didn't actually witness that. So from my point of view he just died. So I didn't go through the process of that or anything like that. It all comes down to six of one, half a dozen of the other—that sickening cliche. What's better? What's easier? What is, in some kind of Freudian way, more psychologically helpful to a person to be able to cope with something like that later in life? Who knows? I just figure you're given the cards that you're dealt and you act accordingly.

K.S. My father died in an auto accident the year before my mother's death. 1 was six and seven. The older / get the more aware I become that it all happened. As one is growing up one just sort of lives one's life—just blows through it on youthful energy. But the older one gets, I think these psychological issues begin to seep through. They are our groundwater.

J.R. Having played characters who have dealt with their fathers' death or living or coming back from the dead or whatever, I certainly have given it considerable consideration and thought.

K.S. I used to think if God is omniscience, then death is simply becoming a part of his vast knowledge. I would be freaked out by the thought that my parents could see me—all the bad things.

J.R. Mmmm...I don't think I've ever been as bad as you, Kevin.

K.S. You've got plenty of time.

J.R. It never bothered me that I thought I was being watched. I guess I've been better than the papers predict I have been.

K.S. Back to this press issue. . . Look, I feel weird asking you personal questions, but we each are responsible to our respective audiences, and I know that your personal life is part of what my own audience wants to read about. But I feel also that the more you withhold about your private life, then the more enticed people are going to be. Then it becomes a bigger problem for you.

J.R. Let me tell you something. If you give them a little bit, then it's never enough. That's part of the problem that I've discovered: It is never enough. It's never enough. From my mistakes I have learned such. It is never enough. So at this point I am calling fair play to everybody and saying, Look, I don't have anything against anybody, no matter what anybody has ever said, done, or written. I don't have anything against anybody. But let's call a truce and have some kind of respect for ourselves and some kind of human dignity and some kind of higher regard and not have to go down to some level of gossip and lies to sell papers. Because certainly, if nothing else, our trees are worth more than to put this kind of bullshit on them.

K.S. There is this general Robin Hood quality of tabloid journalism—you know, stealing the privacy from the famous to give to the unfamous. But let's look at the specific case when you were with Kiefer Suther- land. This coincides with your bad press relations. You were so public with that love affair that you therefore invited a lot of this public scrutiny into your private life.

J.R. Sure, I lent to the imbalance of things. But certainly I think it came more from an ignorance of how vicious people could be. I just always assume that everybody is nice and I will consider everybody nice until they prove me wrong. I have an unending trust for people. Why, I know not. I refuse to alter that by virtue of some nasty press clippings. It's just not worth it. I enjoy people too much. That also gives it too much power and interest and things that it certainly doesn't merit. So I think that my dealings early on with the press during that time I was with Kiefer were unfortunate because we actually, between the two of us, dealt with things on a semi-mature level. The two of us in a room dealt with things well. It spun so out of control and took on a life of its own that had nothing to do with me, or with Kiefer, for that matter. We both had to deal with things that were uncalled-for, that were created. I have a lot of mixed feelings about it. But I think that they are mine. I did get a lot of support from people. That was nice and helpful at that time. I just think it was unfortunate that it had to be dealt with in such a dirty, smug, cynical way in the papers. It became such a tale of fiction, ultimately. It really takes away everybody's dignity, including the writer's as he tries to usurp our dignity as people.

K.S. Why did you choose to do Tinkerbell in Steven Spielberg's Hook? Ironically, you had to play this most innocent of sprites at the same time your nonmarriage to Kiefer was becoming a scandal. Then, afterward, during a profile of him on 60 Minutes, Spielberg was rather negative about his working experience with you. Coyly so.

J.R. Well...I've always loved Tinkerbell, first of all. I thought it would be fun. It would be nice to be in a movie that was more focused toward children. Those were the primary reasons. It's funny—regardless of what was going on in my life at the time that I was making that movie, I am, I think, very good about separating my home from work when I go there and then my work from home when I go back home. I mean, I do it as I see fit, more or less. Doing blue screen [the technical process Spielberg used to superimpose Roberts's Tinkerbell image on other, separately shot scenes] and all that stuff was very isolating and strange, but we had a good time. I don't care what anybody says. I would be curious to hear anybody who was really on my soundstage, on my blue-screen stage, that worked with me that had anything bad to say or nasty to say. So I was truly surprised when people started giving out all these quotes—and people who I had never heard of who were supposedly there. It was surprising and unfortunate and disappointing, but this is where my trust can be just as much of a curse as a blessing because Mr. Spielberg felt inclined... He wasn't not nice. He was very coy, yes. He took these hesitations as if he had to choose his words very carefully when asked about me. I watched it and thought, Is this the same man I had whipped-cream fights with on the set? Is this the same man who said that he couldn't wait every day to get to our stage because it was more fun than the big stage and more relaxed and easier, and even though it took nine hours to set up the shot, that I got it done so fast and I kept everything moving and was always good-humored and didn't complain? I guess sometimes it's just too tempting to be in the majority. To have him even say that it was difficult for me to be going through a personal experience like that while making a movie—well, yeah, it is. But did I do it with as much ease as anyone could ever do it in? Yeah. Do I ever feel like I inconvenienced him with my personal life in any way, shape, or form on the set ? No.

K.S.You seem quite hurt by this. Your voice has changed. Your eyes are watering up.

J.R. Well...I'm just. . .people disappoint me. It's too bad. We did have an enjoyable time. We did actually have moments of great humor on that set. I mean, a friend of mine actually shot a video of my last day of filming on Hook for me as a wrap present and it was very funny. I was up on a picnic table with these gigantic mushrooms doing my thing and Steven and everybody were way down below and he kept going up and talking into the video camera and going, "You are just the greatest Tinkerbell... I love you. And you were fabulous. You dealt with all that crazy technical blue-screen isolation, blah blah blah. . . " It was so nice. So to watch that and then unknowingly turn on my television and watch him on 60 Minutes. . .that's surprising. . .My only frustrations on that movie at all were that some of the setups took so long—would really take six hours—and I didn't quite frankly know what to do with myself for all that time sitting in a trailer. I know it's hard to schedule things and you have technical problems when you're dealing with that much stuff. Those guys worked so hard. I understood that.

K.S. Did you call Spielberg up after his 60 Minutes appearance and confront him?

J.R. I didn't see a reason to. He obviously sort of missed some aspect of me as a person.

K.S. Did you feel fooled by him?

J.R. No, I don't feel fooled. And at this point it doesn't really matter. You can only find disappointment in an expectant mind, and I don't really expect anything from Steven.

K.S. There is a sense about you, Julia, that you have recovered from something in these last two years. Was it just the exhaustion you were feeling from such massive, instant fame? You almost sound as if you've been in a halfway house in order to escape from your fame, as if it were the abuser in an abusive relationship you were finally having the courage to escape from. Has your fame been that awful for you?

J.R. It's not an awful thing. It's not that I've recovered from something, it's that I've discovered certain things. I won't mind it, because it is simply a fact of the matter. ... I have very specific reasons why I make movies.

K.S. Which are?

J.R. Which are that I really love it and don't know anything else. I couldn't...

K.S. Is it a heightened sense of family? 

J.R. I think that's part of it. I really think it's a gene defect or something. Some breakdown in the DNA chain. I love all of it. The whole shebang.

K.S. Do you like it because you're the focus?

J.R. No. Because I don't feel like I am.

K.S. Oh, come on. You're literally the focus. The lens must focus on that face.

J.R. Yeah, but the fact is that no matter how much I might want to be the focus or try to be the focus or whatever... because if Vinny Gerardo doesn't find me interesting enough to focus on, then I'm out of focus.

K.S.Who's that?

J.R. He's my focus puller.

K.S. Could you be the script girl and still be as happy to be on a set?

J.R. Well, I don't know because I think that's probably the hardest job on the set and I don't envy that job. Diane Dreyer and Vinny have the two jobs I envy the least.

K.S.When will they start calling it the script woman instead of the script girl?

J.R. I don't know. I call it the script supervisor—but not out of any feminist reasons.

K.S. Are you a feminist?

J.R. I'm just Julia.

K.S. You're just Julia. That could be the title of the first of your many autobiographies. One of the things you seem to share with lawyer John Grisham is a healthy cynicism about your profession. He has a love-hate relationship with the law in each of his books, and you certainly seem to have the same sort of relationship with the business of being a movie star.

J.R. I don't think it's a cynicism; I think it is a perspective. I appreciate the irony of "The Business." I think I have a pretty good sense of humor about it. At first when I took this time off it was easy because I was just tired and I wanted the time to just run around with my girlfriends and do whatever I pleased. It wasn't until the last six or eight months of this last two years that I really got into the rhythm and the secure place of not working and of being on my own. Every minute of the day was spent exactly the way I wanted to spend it. It was some of the best time I have ever spent because, I think, if nothing else, this business sort of breeds a panic. Everyone sort of figures if they just keep moving, if they keep on that track, it will all be O.K. I don't subscribe to that philosophy. ... I won't say that I was calm and cool the whole time. There were times when I got panicked and I thought, Well, jeez, am I ever going to read a good script? Am I being too picky? But finally there comes The Calm, when you say, You know what? In the big scheme of things one year or two years—or even if it had ended up being three years or whatever—is not that much. Whatever is meant to be will be and will come my way, and if I were to force it, then it wouldn't be as it should. Relax and It Won't Hurt—that's the category it all finally falls under.

K.S. Mmmm.

J.R. Relax—and it won't hurt...

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